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This Yank has a copy of “Canadian History for Dummies”, but still is at a loss here. What I see here is akin to the GOP in the ‘States of the same period — correct? Kind of a “Liberal – Light” party, where they take the bits that are in place and simply try to make ‘em work?

DougM

In a way, but there are huge differences in the two countries political structure and culture. First, the Democrats in the US are still well to the right of the Conservatives in Canada. Most (though not all) US Democrats would never support the amount of social services we have here. Second, the PM here (Westminster Parliamentry system) has, at least with a majority – power the US President could only dream of. And as we found out with a previous Liberal PM, we don’t have the ability to impeach so long as his caucus will protect him.

To (hopefully) answer your question then, yes, the two parties were, at least back then, not as dissimular as one might think, and “took the bits that were in place and tried to make them work”. But over the decades, and beginning with a Liberal PM (Trudeau) who refused to join the WW II War Effort and spent the war years touring and becoming fascintated with Communism and Socialism, (thence importing some facets of those tenets into Canada). Since then, there has been a larger difference between the parties and, also like in the US, there has been a more strained relationship between them. The end result is that now the Liberals are very socialist and see the Conservatives as destroying the nanny state they believe in with a religous zeal, and the Conservatives who tend to see the worldwide and national economic reality as the one driving factor that must be met for the survival of the country. At the risk of being oblique, most on this board would tend to agree with reality…

kenn2

The end result is that now the Liberals are very socialist and see the
Conservatives as destroying the nanny state they believe in with a
religous zeal,and the Conservatives who tend to see the worldwide and national
economic reality as the one driving factor that must be met for the
survival of the country.

In other words, Canadian conservatives like to erect and tilt at strawmen too, while ignoring several Liberal governments who also exercised fiscal prudence, but without reversing social progress or conducting ideological purges.